War-Hungry GOP Wants To Spend Money On War But Not To Feed The Children

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – Since you’re not going to end the program, and since you’re not going to end all manner of foreign transfer payments, whether it’s foreign aid or Bernyankme shoveling money off to banks in foreign lands, since none of this is going to stop, why in dude’s holy name would you allow this to be branded as and to come at the expense of women, infants, and children? Can’t you find a base somewhere of the hundreds of bases we have across the known universe and close one of them to save the $214 million and spare the women, infants, and children? Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike: “House GOP sets up fight with Obama on CFTC, food aid.” This is worthy of playing “Right-Wingers Get Stoned” because right-wingers must be stoned in order to pursue this.

[reading]

House Republicans rolled out a $19.5 billion agriculture spending bill Tuesday [Mike: Note they still want to spend the money.] that deals back-to-back blows to President Barack Obama’s reform agenda for food aid overseas and the financial markets at home.

Mike: I wonder how many Americans would raise their hand or would check a box on their W2 form every year: Check this box if you want some of your withholding to go to Ethiopia from your friends at the State Department, in other words foreign aid. Or would you rather go to your local church and go: Oh, there’s a mission next month going to Africa. We’ve got machine gun preacher Gerard Butler going with us. We’re going to bring some of our food over there. No, we don’t need the government to launder the money, we’re actually going to do that ourselves. That’s not how charity is done anymore, is it? No siree Bob, we hire large military aircraft. Oh, we don’t hire them, we just order them. Get those containers of USDA cheese and we’ll drop them over there in the middle of the desert somewhere. Make sure you put a thank you card on there, too…

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[reading]

An estimated $1.15 billion is provided for the Food for Peace program, [Mike: What in dude’s holy name is the Food for Peace program? It sounds to me like we would be sending food to people that are at war with us so that they would then declare armistice and be at peace with us, doesn’t it?] $284 million less than was enacted this spring and with none of the changes that Obama wanted to allow the purchase of more food overseas.

At the same time, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is effectively frozen at its current operating budget of $195 million reflecting the March sequester. That is $10 million below the level set in the continuing resolution this spring and represents a nearly 40 percent cut from Obama’s 2014 budget request.

The House Appropriations Committee is expected to begin consideration of the 76-page measure this week, but no floor action is expected before the larger five year farm bill later this month. Nonetheless, the appropriations measure has a direct impact on funding for agencies and will be hugely important in deciding the fate of Obama’s food aid reforms.

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Mike:We’re told that we have impoverished children in the United States. We’re told that middle class families are barely keeping up with inflation. Their fortunes, their net worth, and their upward mobility has been seriously curtailed. Yet there’s still $20 billion lying around that our magisterial government can use to feed people in countries that are not Detroit, to feed people in countries that are not Cleveland, or that are not [insert your inner city here]. Listen to this:

[reading]

The administration argues that these changes will both save money and expedite the delivery of aid. Anticipating resistance, the White House has promised that 55 percent of the funds would still be devoted to purchases at home. But that is a big drop from the current practice and would be a setback for an already struggling US maritime industry.

One risk for the administration is that the fight will only invite more cuts by conservatives from the underlying program. [Mike: This is where the GOP becomes the stupid party.] Almost half the House Republicans in the last Congress voted to kill funding entirely for Food for Peace. And the $1.15 billion allowed in the draft House bill Tuesday represents a 15 percent cut on top of the reductions ordered under sequestration in March.

The cuts come as the same bill would also reduce funding for the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) nutrition program. The $6.7 billion provided in discretionary funds is $214 million below what was provided in the continuing resolution this spring and is $487 million less than Obama’s 2014 budget request.

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Mike: Let me see if I understand this. So you’re going to pick a fight with the president over this budget item because you can. In that budget item is food, subsistence for women, infants and children. It is conservatives that are branded [mocking] “They want to cut food for women, infants and children.” I am for ending all federal food assistance programs because there is no constitutional justification for this, nor should there be. Either we are good, kind, caring Christian people and we do provide food to those in need and those that need it and want it, or we are not. We don’t need the government to do this for us. We are perfectly capable of feeding the poor without having senators and members of the House of Representin’ argue over which city or which bank or which shelter or which county gets what. Of course, all this food is provided by friends of the government. [mocking] “They manufacture it for free, don’t they?” — “Oh, no, they don’t.” — “You mean they charge for it?” — “Damn skippy.” End the program, sure, do it.

Since you’re not going to end the program, and since you’re not going to end all manner of foreign transfer payments, whether it’s foreign aid or Bernyankme shoveling money off to banks in foreign lands, since none of this is going to stop, why in dude’s holy name would you allow this to be branded as and to come at the expense of women, infants, and children? Can’t you find a base somewhere of the hundreds of bases we have across the known universe and close one of them to save the $214 million and spare the women, infants, and children? Can’t you find some bomb or sets of bombs that are going to be constructed to blow some unsuspecting souls to kingdom come and maybe not manufacture them for a year rather than taking the food from women, infants, and children? Yet the stupid party is going to proceed. They’re going to allow their lust for war and for intervention and “robust national defense,” they’re going to allow that to trump women, infants, and children. That’s just stupid. That’s beyond misguided. That’s just dumb, yet there it is in black and white. Let’s roll our sleeves up and get in there.

Again, to reiterate, I am for the elimination of the program and am confident that people that currently benefit from it would find assistance from the American public at large. I don’t have a problem with ending the program. Since it’s not going to be ended and the other expenditures I just mentioned are also not going to be ended, you’re going to suffer an unnecessary black eye over this. It just seems absolutely silly.